More than 150 years after it sank off Cape Hatteras inside the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, a woolen coat discarded by a Union sailor trying to escape the doomed ship is approaching another milestone.

No one watching the Union fleet in Hampton Roads in late April 1864 could have failed to notice when it began to swell to historic proportions.
Stretching out nearly 10 miles, the giant collection of warships, transports, auxiliary vessels and barges...

Most of the sailors in the Union’s powerful North Atlantic Blockading Squadron were sound asleep when a small, nearly silent craft slipped through the early morning darkness of April 9, 1864 toward the flagship USS Minnesota off Newport News Point....

Twenty-five days after the ironclad CSS Virginia inflicted the United States' worst naval defeat before Pearl Harbor, 10 thunderous cannon blasts sounded from the beach at Fort Monroe across the far reaches of Hampton Roads.
Fired from the immense...

About 22 miles long and only 4 miles wide, the area that became Newport News was first settled in 1619.
In 1896, that community — the former seat of Warwick County — became the separate city of Newport News. Warwick County was one of the...

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Museums and sites can help you track the story of our region. From the earliest settlers to the space explorers, Hampton Roads museums tell a continuous story of the importance of our area.
History museums
1. Air Power Park. Vintage military jets, missiles, rockets and children's playground. Indoor exhibits, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Outdoor park, sunrise-sunset daily. Free. 413 W. Mercury Blvd., Hampton. 726-0650 or 727-8311. hampton.gov/Facilities/Facility/Details/Air-Power-Park-23
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No one watching the Union fleet in Hampton Roads in late April 1864 could have failed to notice when it began to swell to historic proportions.
Stretching out nearly 10 miles, the giant collection of transports, auxiliary vessels, barges and warships boasted at least 120 hulls and ranked among the biggest armadas ever seen in the world’s greatest harbor.
Just as striking as its leviathan size was the number of new ships that had arrived just in time to demonstrate the industrial and military...

The Mariners’ Museum reopened its giant USS Monitor conservation lab this week after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which administers the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary — agreed to provide a one-year funding allocation of $200,000.
The industrial-sized complex — which houses the historic gun turret of the famous Civil War ironclad as well as more than 80 tons of other artifacts recovered from its Cape Hatteras, N.C., wreck — shut down Jan. 9...

Long before the start of the expedition that recovered the USS Monitor gun turret from the bottom of the Atlantic in 2002, Navy divers and NOAA archaeologists working to save the historic Civil War ship knew they might run into the remains of lost sailors.
More than a dozen crewmen were believed to have gone down with the doomed ironclad in a Cape Hatteras, N.C., storm, and the only escape from below decks was through a hatch in the top of turret.
Not until the first glints of human bone appeared some...

Eleven years ago, Navy Capt. Barbara "Bobbie" Scholley dived more than 230 feet into the ocean to help bring back the past: two sailors killed when their Civil War battleship sank in 1862.
On Friday, the Annapolis woman joined the crew members' descendants and dignitaries to usher them into eternity.
The two sailors, whose remains were recovered from the wreckage of the USS Monitor in 2002, were buried at Arlington on Friday, 151 years after the ship battled the Confederate ironclad Virginia in the...

WASHINGTON — Two sailors who perished 150 years ago in the sinking of one of history's most famous warships took a solemn step toward their final resting place Thursday when their remains were transferred to a Navy ceremonial guard at Dulles International Airport.
Recovered from the wreck of the famed Civil War ironclad USS Monitor in 2002, the remains have been in the custody of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii for more than a decade, during which time forensic anthropologists...